I grew up in an extended family. Of course, I didn’t know it was an extended family. All I knew was that it was my family. A mother, father, brother, grandmother, and grandfather. Sometimes there were aunts, uncles, and cousins, depending on how extended the family was. When you’re a child you don’t know any better. I didn’t. I woke up and everybody was there. I guess I figured that every family had the same cast of characters. The good news about an extended family, especially and multi-generational extended family, is that you’re exposed to lots of different world views…

The Lesson of Leeway I’m not much of a sailor. That in and of itself may not surprise you. Sailing, I found out, is – or can be – a very busy endeavor. I suppose there are times when everything goes just right and there’s a magic about being out on the water being pushed by the power of the wind. But for me, everytime I’ve tried to sail, the power of the wind has tried to push me into the rocks. It has to do with lee way. Or more precisely, the lack of lee way. You see, there’s…

If we set the WayBack machine to the Spring of 1991 we’ll find an overweight, smoking, over-working, Associate Dean at the Oberlin Conservatory who looks a little bit like “the Penguin.” Bigger, duller, less happy, and weighed down not just by body but also by his spirit. At some point you’ll find Dean Bingham picking up an old Peugeot 10-speed with white-wall tires and shift levers on the down tube. And with that purchase his life, my life, changed forever. When I was a kid I loved to ride my bicycle. LOVED it. I started on a ratty 20-incher with…

Winning isn’t about life and death, it’s much more serious than that.  You’ve got to love age-groupers. You know who they are. These are the runners who know what place they’ll get in a local 5K by just looking at the cars in the parking lot. They know who, in their age group, they can beat every time, who they can never beat, and who might give them a run for their money. They are at every race, in every club, all over the country. I know. I’ve met most of them. You know who they are without even thinking…

Penguin Chronicles: January 26, 2016 Hearing Voices The late Dr. George Sheehan was arguably the greatest philosopher on running that ever put a word on paper. His book “Running and Being” was the manifesto of his generation of runners. They believed, as he did, that through running and the galvanizing effect of effort, we can find what it means to experience the oneness of body and mind, of self and the universe. In this, he argues, we have the power to discover “the truth that makes men free.” He was the voice of his generation of runners. He wrote to…

AS SIMPLE AS CHILD’S PLAY Robert Fulghum wrote that everything he really needed to know, he learned in kindergarten. Fulghum contends that the lessons of childhood, like sharing and playing fair, are just as important to us as adults. We would argue that everything we really need to know about play, we also learned in kindergarten. As children we knew instinctively how to play, where to play, when to play, and how much to play. As children we knew that play had to include intensity and rest. And our wide-ranging curiosity led us naturally to engage in a variety of…

Penguin Chronicles : April 1996 There are many advantages to starting to run later in life. Among them is the ability to use running as a means to rediscover memories long forgotten. For me, running is the key that has unlocked the most foreboding doors in the cellar of my psyche. Having had a life before running means there are many people and places which exist for the pre-running me. As that pre-runner recedes into my past, I’ve found I need a guide to take me from the person I was to the person I am becoming. Running has become…

From Craftsman to Artist: February 2003 For 30 years I prided myself on being a craftsman as a musician. I left the art of music to those that I thought had more talent or training. I was content merely to play the right notes, on time, and in tune. I was a player. Nothing more. I gave little attention to my own thoughts and preferences. Loud was as loud as the conductor wanted. Fast was as fast as the music required. What I felt, what I wanted, from the music of the moment was always subject to the whims of…

How a single run can become the road to the future By now most regular readers of this column know how I came to called “the Penguin” . For those of you who don’t, and for those of you who have forgotten, I’ll give you a thumbnail sketch. I had been running for about 6 months, had lost a few pounds [about 50 ], and caught sight of myself in a glass storefront window in Appleton, Wisconsin. Rather than seeing the thin, gazelle-like figure that I imagined I was I saw instead a short, fat, middle-aged man with his stomach…

Getting there is more than half the fun: September 2002 A well-known adage among teachers of musical performance is that the last 10% of improvement takes 90% of the student’s time and effort. This explains why so many musicians reach a point of comfortable mediocrity and then have no desire to go any further. Reaching for those final, tiny improvements is time consuming. It takes equal parts of tenacity and talent. I’m convinced the same is true for runners. As a beginning runner, I could count on setting a personal record almost every time I raced and adding more miles…